PC Magazine - USA (2019-12)

SECURITY SUPPORT CAN CONTINUE, IF YOU PAY UP

The main reason Microsoft retires older versions of its operating

systems is that maintaining them requires resources and engineers.

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products and services.

From 2015 to 2020, during Windows 7’s extended support period,

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acknowledges that not all its customers will be able to make the

transition by January 2020, especially large enterprises and government

agencies for whom the port will be costly.

That’s why the company has an Extended Security Update program,

which will run until January 2023. Organizations that want to continue

using Windows 7 Pro and receive bug patches will have to pay $50 per

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year to do so. That’s a hefty price, especially for organizations that

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There will be an exception for Windows 7 users who have an active

Windows 10 subscription; they will receive one year of Extended

Security Updates for free.

WINDOWS 7 EMBEDDED: A SUPPORT EXCEPTION

Windows 7 is not just for laptops and desktop workstations. Many

Internet of Things (IoT) devices, such as point-of-sale terminals, ATMs,

vending machines, and medical devices are using it. Most of these

devices use Windows 7 Embedded, a stripped-down version of the

operating system meant to run on resource-constrained machines.

IoT devices are especially vulnerable: Hackers often target them with

ransomware because they control critical applications in the physical

world, and their owners are more likely to pay. They are also popular

targets for botnet viruses, which hackers use in distributed denial of

service (DDoS) attacks.

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